‘Lucy, thinking about Celia’s décor and the food she serves, I am confident the 1970s is her favourite decade.’ I hoped Lucy was going to be luckier buying presents for Celia than I had been over the years. Every posh scented candle, silk scarf, cashmere cardigan, designer objet, every single trinket I had ever bought her was usually re-gifted to someone else. One year, she even re-gifted me a rather nice blue cardigan the following Christmas. Hopefully Waterford crystal would be the breakthrough present.
‘I do hope so!’ said Lucy. ‘Mary’s always going to Ikea these days, buying trendy bits and bobs. But some people still like the more traditional things. My Mammy does for one. And…’ she dropped her voice. ‘It’s a second. It’s has a flaw, apparently, in the crystal. But you’d never know. Cost half what it should. I do like a bargain and it’s unnoticeable.’
‘She’ll love it,’ I said. ‘And you don’t have to tell her it’s a second.’
‘Have you seen my cufflinks?’ said Michael to Lucy. ‘I had them this week and now…’ He began patting himself down in an increasingly frenzied way. ‘The ones with the EU flag on. My special ones…’
‘Inner pocket of your Louis Copeland?’ she said immediately. ‘You had them on Thursday when we had the SIPL meeting. With your blue shirt with the thin stripe.’
‘Smart girl!’ he said, charging up the stairs, meeting Rosie on the way down.
‘At last!’ I said. ‘Come on, sweetheart, what on earth have you been doing up there?’ But she looked pale and washed out. ‘Are you okay? Are you feeling all right?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, huffily. ‘Can you please stop going on?’
‘Stop your fussing, Mammy,’ said Michael, drumming down the stairs, twisting in his cufflinks. ‘Fuss, fuss, fuss!’
*
When I met Michael, for some reason, intentionally or not, he made me laugh. He was earnest and sweet. And well-meaning. And I admired him. A young man standing up for what he believed in and I’d been brought up to value principles and conviction and, although he wasn’t like Nora who thought nothing of camping out on a pavement to make a point, in his own way, he was putting himself out there. And more than anything, I wanted to have a baby.
Michael was equally in a hurry to settle down because for a man with serious political ambitions, a wife was an entirely necessary appendage. We weren’t much of a success as a couple, even before Rosie arrived, but I hoped I had guaranteed Rosie extra years of happiness by giving her what I had thought was a proper family. But maybe it was perfectly okay to have two parents who were flatmates rather than passionate teammates. I wanted Rosie to have what I didn’t. A Dad. A Father. Someone who would love her completely and utterly. I wanted her life to be wonderful. I had thought by staying with Michael, I couldn’t fail. But now as I sat in the ministerial car beside my silent daughter, listening to my husband and his secretary chat about meetings and strategies – and all about the powers of milk – as if I wasn’t there, I was beginning to wonder. Had it really been the best thing?
*
Michael had grown up in the house but for some reason – which I had never quite fathomed – he was never given a key and the four of us, clutching our gifts, smiles plastered to face, stood outside, waiting for Celia.
But it was Imelda Goggins, Celia’s best pal, who let us in. School friends and maids of honour at each other’s weddings, Celia and Imelda had lived in each other’s pockets for the last half a century.
‘Michael! How are you?’ Imelda pressed her big, powdery face, close to his, kissing him hard on the cheek. ‘Oh now, look what I’ve done.’ She wiped her lipstick off his face with her thumb. ‘There,’ she pronounced. ‘Good as new. Now, who do I hand him back to?’ She looked enquiringly at me and then at Lucy. ‘The wife or the secretary? Who is the power behind the throne? Well, that’s what it was like with my Frank. His secretary, long dead now – good riddance – was a battle axe. Wouldn’t allow him to do any actual work, waved him off to the golf course every day so she could just get on with things. I was petrified to ring the office for anything because she was always so busy. Frank was simply terrified of her. Just said, yes Enid. No Enid. Is it time for lunch yet? He got all the credit, though.’ She then mouthed the next sentence, making no sound at all. ‘And the salary.’
And just in time, there was Celia, elbow-barging Imelda out of the way, in a puff of Chanel No 5 and a haze of lilac, arms outstretched. She and Michael embraced in their curiously unaffectionate way, never quite making enough bodily contact for the hug to mean anything.
‘And Rosie, darling…’ And now it was my turn to be elbowed out of the way as she grabbed her granddaughter and briefly embraced her. ‘How are you getting on, hmmm? Working hard? Hmmm? No hard work, no Trinity!’
Rosie opened her mouth to speak but Celia ploughed on.
‘Tabitha…’ She embraced me, stiffly, entirely without warmth. It was like trying to hug a lamppost. ‘You are looking… your usual self. Gardening again?’
‘No…’ For a moment, I wondered what she meant. ‘No, well I was last week… oh…’ And then I realised that I was wearing my tweed jacket, which I had thought quite stylish.
‘And Lucy,’ she said, smoothly turning her attention to Lucy. ‘You look marvellous. Such a pretty colour on you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Lucy, looking a little apologetically at me as the recipient of such obvious favouritism.
‘Now… I can see you have your hands full… Imelda, maybe you can help everyone with their packages?’ That was our signal to hand them over.
‘Happy birthday, Celia.’ I passed her the handmade and very expensive leather gloves I had bought from Michael, Rosie and me.
‘Well, let’s see what this is…’ She pulled off the ribbon, opened the slim box and peeled open the tissue. ‘Gloves?’
‘Italian leather,’ I said. ‘Feel them.’ I’d tried them on in the shop and they felt beautiful to wear. But it looked like I’d failed again.
‘Gloves are what my mother always gave the staff for Christmas,’ she said, nose wrinkling as she handed the box to Imelda.
Michael bristled beside me. ‘But grandmother didn’t have staff,’ he said. ‘She had a cleaning lady if that is what you are referring to?’
It was now all down to Lucy and her Waterford crystal. ‘I have a little something,’ said Lucy, passing the box to Celia. ‘Happy birthday.’
‘Oh you darling girl,’ she said to Lucy. ‘You shouldn’t have.’
She really shouldn’t have, I thought. But we waited, breath-bated, to see if this was the present which would make Celia happy. She handed the torn paper to Imelda and lifted up the box. ‘Waterford Crystal?’ she said curiously. ‘A carriage clock?’ We all waited to hear the result. It was like waiting for Simon Cowell to give his verdict. She pulled it out of the box, examining it with the eye of an expert on the Antiques Roadshow. ‘What’s this?’ she said. ‘A flaw. A scratch, here at the bottom.’ We all tried to see what she was pointing at. ‘Oh my poor dear, they’ve sold you a flawed piece of crystal. You’ll have to take it back.’ She passed it to Lucy who was green around the gills. Another failure. Michael gave Lucy a sympathetic look.
‘Now, come along. Quickly. My other guests were told to be here for 1.45pm… I always give an early off when I’m giving a little gathering. Little tip for you there Lucy when hosting. Now give me your arm, and you Rosie. And Michael, you must talk to everyone. They’re all been simply desperate to talk to you about Europe. So many questions! I said I can’t possibly answer them all, but Michael will be only too pleased. There’s a few policy points that need clarifying, there’s the free-range pigs bill. And also, we need to hear all about SIPL… it’s such a wonderful initiative. And you mentioned milk on the radio the other morning. The interviewer on Morning Ireland was positively cruel not to let you speak. I wrote to the director general. He knows who I am and I told him exactly what I thought about that excuse for a journalist. There are just no standards left anywhere. In public or private life.’
Chapter Seven